Day 312/315 Mon 20 –Thurs 23 Aug 2007 Sutton Coldfield, England

A few days spent giving the washing machine a work out, sorting clothes and a thorough clean of the car to satisfy the Aus quarantine requirements. We decide to send it back as no one in UK wants a car without miles on the speedo and find a shipping company in Southampton who promise to have it on a ship by Saturday - of course they don’t but its enough to get us in.

Cleaning and sorting done, we spend an afternoon shopping in Birmingham, buying luggage to put everything in. On Thursday we drive up to Liverpool to visit Kate’s sister and family. We all go to the newly restored Royal Albert Docks to re-live Liverpool’s world heritage maritime mercantile history and visit the Beatles Experience, a cross between a museum and a theme park in a former dockside warehouse. All very interesting but not sure we would have paid $1m for John’s gold specs.